Readers’ Forum
OPINION
Readers’ Forum submissions should be emailed to George Lee, PEG Editor, at glee@apega.ca. Please limit them to 300 words or less. Longer letters are printed at the discretion of the editor. Letters may be edited for brevity, taste, clarity, and legality. Please note: Readers’ Forum items are treated as opinions and therefore are NOT peer reviewed. They do not necessarily reflect the views of APEGA Council, Executive Committee, or staff.
PROFESSIONALS NEED BETTER COMMUNICATION SKILLS — AND HERE’S A GREAT PATH
effective and lowest-cost speaking and presentation training available. To find clubs near you, visit d42tm.org. My own club, the 3,500 Foot Club in Calgary, meets on Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Centre on Southport Road SW. The centre is a 10-minute walk from the Anderson LRT Station. We have four Professional Engineers in our club — we’d love to have more.
No matter how ingenious your ideas are, for them to be implemented, you must persuade others to adopt them. Often, those who need persuading are not technical types but do hold the purse strings. Through its network of clubs, Toastmasters International has successfully helped people improve their speaking and presentation skills for 90 years. There are about 70 in Calgary alone. A club provides a friendly, supportive atmosphere for you to become a better communicator. Although the club provides guidance manuals, you choose your own topics and words. Club colleagues are your audience, providing evaluation and feedback. You develop at your own pace. As a mining engineer in a consultant firm, my Toastmasters experience has been invaluable. I learned to speak confidently at project meetings and with clients. I learned that structure, in both oral and written reports, is an essential part of communication. This helped my report writing and boosted client confidence. At a small gathering to honour new APEGA Life Members, I was the only one who responded to a call for a story from my engineering experience. A club meeting includes an impromptu speaking session. Members are chosen to speak briefly on a given topic. This is not easy for beginners, but the skill can be developed. It’s good practice for question-and-answer sessions at technical presentations. Some clubs include a business meeting in their agenda. This is when parliamentary procedure and chairing a meeting are practised — important skills for Professional Engineers assuming management roles. Each club has a name. It may be a breakfast club, a noon- hour club or an evening club. Some clubs are company clubs, open only to the company’s employees. There are clubs related to professions — the Calgary Society of Petroleum Engineers has one, for example. You can attend a club as a guest, at no cost, to see if it’s to your liking. Every club has its own flavour, so check out a few before committing. Membership fees vary according to the cost of the meeting place. Company-provided meeting places usually mean lower fees. Toastmasters is, in my opinion, the most
ANTONY STRICKLAND, P.ENG. Life Member Calgary
TANK CARS — CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION
Re: Tank Cars Present a Design Challenge, Readers’ Forum, The PEG, Winter 2014, and various responses, Readers’ Forum, The PEG, Spring 2015. My letter suggesting that Professional Engineers have another look at our current tank car designs brought a good response. I am glad to be able to reply to some of the remarks. Jim Blum, P.Eng., of Calgary, notes that the problem of curves can be ameliorated by the conical design of bogey wheels. On a curve, the one-piece wheelset slides outwards by centrifugal force until the outer wheel’s flange rubs the outer rail, and the different rail contact diameters provide for different peripheral distances travelled. It’s only a partial solution, though. There are problems. What’s called hunting oscillation, or the swaying motion of a train, occurs at higher speeds. On a long curve, wheel flanges will hammer the outer rail, bounce off, and return, usually at a cycle frequency related to train speed. This may account in some measure for rail failures. Jim Benedict, P.Eng., also of Calgary, suggests that sloshing may result from my proposed egg-shaped tank, resulting in dangerous interior gas formation. Perhaps a cross-section of an equilateral triangle, with well-rounded corners, would make for less sloshing than would a cylinder,
16 | PEG SUMMER 2015
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